


And At Once I Knew (I Was Not Magnificent)

by br0ken_hands



Series: The Vigilante AU [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Vigilante AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 04:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14584833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/br0ken_hands/pseuds/br0ken_hands
Summary: 'Fuck the Mighty Acht', she thinks, as darkness creeps around the edges of her vision, 'Their name isn't even that good.'or, the five times Yasha helped a colourful band of adventurers, and one time she was helped in return





	And At Once I Knew (I Was Not Magnificent)

The first time Yasha meets them, it's when the storm takes her to Zadash. It's a city wildly different than she's been in before, filled with residential apartment buildings and lit in the night by pinks and blues from fluorescents winking in and out of the darkness. The buzzing from the lights is just a part of the environment here, like how it's always muggy, always on the cusp of a monsoon, always on the edge of... something. There's a built-up energy here, ready for something to happen, and Yasha can see why her god likes it here, the anticipation, the charge before the lightning strikes. 

She's up on the roofs of one of the buildings on yet another humid night, robes sticking to the planes of her back, eyes hidden behind the lip of her hood, far away from the distant hum of the fluorescents, communing with the Stormlord, when she sees them.

Them being a pair of tieflings, one blue, one purple, being slowly backed into the corner of an alleyway by a small crowd of hooded figures, each clearly wielding some sort of small blade. 

From her position on the roof, Yasha drops into a crouch, peering from the edge as the scene unfolded before her. The purple tiefling pulls out a pair of blades, curved and jewelled nearly just as ostentatiously as his horns, sliding them over the curve of the back of his neck before bringing them to face their attackers. The other tiefling, much smaller now that she pays attention, says something in Infernal she can't understand, but the knife-wielding individuals don't stop their approach.

Suddenly, there's a shout from the mouth of the alleyway and Yasha turns her head to see four others skid to a stop, glaring at what Yasha can now gather must be some sort of gang attempting to jump the two tieflings. The new arrivals aren't tieflings, much to Yasha's surprise, but an amalgamation of several individuals - two humans, one dirtied and sullen, one fiery and screaming obscenities into the darkness, a half-orc, tall and stoic, and a small halfling girl perhaps, Yasha can't tell. 

The loud one leaps forward, staff raised over her head, and rushes the bandits. From her vantage point, Yasha picks up the eyeroll from the half-orc, the leader maybe, who summons a sword into his hand, glittering of arcane magic, before he joins the fray. 

Yasha watches, still as a statue, as combat rages on, both sides giving as good as they got. Then, her aasimar eyes catch a flash of movement in the dark by the entrance into the alley. Narrowing her eyes, she watched as a smaller bandit crawled up behind the little halfling girl, dagger raised to strike.

Communing with the Stormlord could wait just a little, Yasha thinks as she leaps up off the roof, pulling out her greatsword, hurtling towards the would-be assassin. She brings the pommel down on the back of the man and he falls, eyes wide, with a breathless oomph. 

The halfling girl turns around, yellow eyes flashing in fear. The girl lets out a squeak of surprise and scampers to a man, the grimy human, hiding behind his legs.

The man, orange tabby perched on his shoulder, pivots towards her, coat flapping, fireball summoned at his hand ready to cast, rage colouring the edges of his snarl. Glancing down, he sees the body at Yasha's feet and instead hurls the fireball into the fray that Yasha now better sees unfolding, where it catches on a bandit's shirt and they yelp in pain as they catch on fire.

With their numbers thinned out, the remaining bandits seem to recognize the absurdity of the situation and turn heel, fleeing into the night. With the threat diminished, Yasha fixes the cowl over her head and begins to slink back into the darkness, when a voice calls out.

"Hey, you there! Who are you?" 

She takes off running, using her strength and dexterity to scale the wall of a nearby building, disappearing onto the roof. 

Below, she can hear shouts of bewilderment and a squeaky voice describing how the stranger had saved her life and she smiles a little bit. 

\--

The second time, the Stormlord leads her to the ragtag group of adventurers. She's following the urgings of an unseen force away from all her regular routes around town when she sees him.

The matted nest of orange hair, the mud constantly smeared across his face, that doesn't set him apart from any of the other less well-to-do folk around town, but there's a strange bulk underneath his coat that reminds her of a man she saw in an alleyway not that long ago. He's laying there, propped up against the wall of an abandoned building, arrow in his chest, unmoving.

Looking around her, Yasha doesn't see nor hear anyone coming. Strange, she thinks to herself, as the last time she saw this muddy man not but three days ago, he was with a few more clean and colourful individuals.

Yasha approaches, careful as ever, observant of the sudden change in the static in the air, like the Stormlord is prodding her onwards. Upon closer inspection, the arrow wounds aren't the only fresh marks on this mage's unresponsive body. There are also a set of claw marks that scratch lengthwise down the torso, ending just under the ribs that bleed heavily into the thick leather of the jacket. 

Peeling the garment open, Yasha grimaces when she sees two tomes bound to the inside of the jacket, their covers damaged by sweat and blood. When she snaps her fingers by his ear, there is no response.

Sighing deeply, Yasha glances around one last time before setting a hand on the mage's chest and yanking both arrows in quick succession. As the blood begins to seep through the cotton of the shirt he's wearing, Yasha presses both hands to his chest, covering the entire upper half of his torso, and mutters a prayer to the Stormlord, watching as her hands glow blinding white for a moment before dulling, the warmth of the man's blood and the spiritual energy seeping into the prone form. Pulling away, Yasha watches as the wounds stitch themselves shut and the man's eyes flicker open as he gasps.

The eyes, blue, focus on her for a second, and there's a flash of recognition, before a deep groan of pain.

"You're uh... Safe now."

The mage closes his eyes and sighs.

"Thank you."

The voice is thick with a Zemnian accent, but that's all she can pick up on before she hears a familiar shrill shriek.

"Caleb!"

Yasha scrambles back, wiping her hands on her tunic, and bolts into the darkness, tucking herself away around a corner to observe.

The goblin girl she had saved less than a week ago turns the corner, sliding to a stop by this Caleb's feet.

"Caleb, Caleb, are you alright?"

Her voice is shrill and not the prettiest, but there is obvious genuine care in it, and Yasha smiles despite herself.

"Ja, I'm alright. Let me sit up."

More footsteps, and the rest of the group arrives.

"There you are, Caleb. I'm glad you're alright. Now, what did we say about heading off alone at night?"

This voice is deeper, richer, maybe the half-orc fellow. He seems level-headed enough.

"Maybe we should have, like, a code word for when things go wrong. Like, 'jenga' or 'doritos' or something."

Ah, the monk.

"What kind of language is that? Undercommon?"

Yasha feels a tug on her gut and she knows it's time to go. The Stormlord calls. Peeling herself away from the wall and further into the darkness, she smiles as the banter fades into the distance and soon the only thing she hears are the echoes of her own feet down the alleyway.

\--

Yasha likes to think she's rather familiar with death, at least unto the point that death neither scares her nor is a mystery to her. Death is as common as the feathers of a raven and life just as fleeting as the bird's flight across the skies. None of that, however, prepares her for the cold, still body of the half-orc warlock, half submerged in a pool of water. A little blue tiefling is bent over the body, muttering prayer after prayer, but nothing seems to take hold. There's the sound of some skirmish or another in the background that beckons Yasha, but she's familiar with death, not resurrection, but she supposes that time is of the essence when it comes to such things.

She shoulders in between the two people, hearing a gasp of recognition from the tiefling. 

"It's you! You saved us last time!"

Grunting, Yasha hauls the dripping body over her shoulder. A cursory glance doesn't seem to reveal his weapon on the ground, so Yasha turns and heads towards town. Zadash is no small city by any means but finding a cleric of some sort with enough power to bring back the dead is no easy task. 

"Do you know where you might find a cleric here?"

"Well I'm a cleric, but I don't think the Traveller is listening right now... I don't know any other clerics, I'm kind of new to town..."

Quietly, Yasha mutters a quick prayer to the Stormlord, waiting on his guidance. A moment passes, and a passing storm rumbles to the East.

"Very well," she mutters, shifting the body across her back, "It seems you too have found favour in the Stormlord today."

The cleric is not difficult to find from there. She's an elderly dwarvish woman, short hair spiked and tousled around a tattooed face.

"Well, I can certainly do the resurrection ritual on this fellow, but it'll cost you some coin for the materials."

Death, it seems, is content to take away even when life is wrenched back from its grasp.

"How much?"

"1000 gold."

Jester lets out of whine of disappointment. "I don't have that kind of money; my mother hasn't replied to my letters yet and-"

It's a lot for a wandering soul who's only income comes from odd jobs around town, but there's a tug on her heart for this poor soul and a group of people she doesn't even truly know that she can't explain, so she rummages through her pockets and her bags, scraping together just 1000 gold.

"Don't worry, I've got it."

The cleric takes the coins, counting them and stacking them neatly by a small alter.

"Bring the body to me."

Gently, Yasha lowers the half-orc onto the dais and steps back, watching the cleric move in to do her work.

She watches as a small tendril of light winds out from the cleric's holy symbol, the one of the Dawnfather, wrap around the still body. Her relationship with her god was not quite one of healing. Sure, her lineage gave her healing abilities to a certain extent, but none quite like this, none with the power to bring back the souls of the dead from wherever they go and seal them back within their earthly vessels.

The spell completes, and the half-orc gasps loudly, heaving air into freshly strengthened lungs. The blue cleric squeals and runs forward.

"Oh, Fjord, you're okay!"

"He's all set, ma'am."

Yasha does not move, continuing to observe as the newly resurrected man sits up, blinking away death's sleep from his eyes. His face turns and his gaze fixes on Yasha.

"You..."

She nods, suddenly uncomfortable. Clearing her throat, she swallows. "Uh... Your friends were last fighting just outside the Quadroads. You should probably look for them there." Nodding once more, she turns to leave.

"Wait, did you bring me here? What's your name?"

Yasha doesn't turn around but hastens her pace out the door. The evening air, though muggy, is a welcome freshness, and Yasha slinks back into the shadows to contemplate the strange fondness she has for these intrepid adventurers.

\--

Yasha had lost so much in Xhorhas. When she finally left, she could no longer claim to have any semblance of innocence or naivety, or even an identity. All she had was the Stormlord and the body her spirit inhabited, battered and deeply wounded, barely functional. These were the only things she's had to trust and lean on since then, and it feels quite strange indeed to not hear the Stormlord's beckoning for days at a time.

Yasha supposes her god has other things to attend to - he is the deity of the winds that sink galleons and the waves that carve boulders to handfuls of sand, after all. Perhaps it was good for her to explore outside of the Stormlord's demands once in a while. Perhaps establish her own identity other than just a servant of the god of the tempests. 

Stilling the hands that had been gently running themselves against the flat of her blade, Yasha exhaled slowly through her nose, grimacing. She rubbed the crease between her eyebrows and stood, tucking the blade into its scabbard. A walk always did her good. Staying in one place sheltered from the sky always made her antsy. It felt dangerous to be out of the watchful eye of the Stormlord.

The night air is, as always, thick with humidity, curling the loose hairs that fell out of their braids earlier that night. With the air sticking to her skin, Yasha tucks her hands into her pockets and wanders down the street away from the motel. It's not a big city - lots of little shops with neon signs in its front windows lighting up the dark streets. She had stepped into one earlier, one Invulnerable Vagrant with a firbolg shopkeep much bigger than her. Passing by, she could just make out Pumat Sol cleaning up for the night just behind the slightly tilted "closed" sign that hung on the glass door.

Working her way further down the way, past a dilapidated bar with "Evening Nip" haphazardly painted on a wooden sign above the door, Yasha pauses, listening for the call of her god once again.

Instead, what she hears is a cry from just to her right. Turning into the alley from whence the sound came, Yasha quietly draws her sword and advances silently.

"You better keep it down here, missy. No one's here to save you at this time of night."

An unmistakable sob.

"What do you want?"

"Well, your coinpurse for starters."

There's a clink as a bag of something heavy hits the cobblestones. Yasha peers past a pile of crates and frowns at the sight. Before her is a halfling woman backed against the brick wall of some shop, pinned by an elvish man who towers above her, a dagger in his hand pointed at the halfling's belly.

"Well that is a good start. Now, I hear your husband is quite the businessman as well, isn't he? Well the Gentleman is glad his money is doing well, but it's time to start collecting his returns. Consider this as a first payment."

He bends down to pick up the coinpurse.

"He would never!"

"Well it would be a pity if we had to coerce him to pay, wouldn't it? I wonder if he thinks you're worth-"

"Hey, back off!"

The goon looks up to the shrill voice coming from the far end of the corridor, and bolt. 

Reaching out with her arm, Yasha slams her forearm into his face, knocking him out onto the ground 

"I don't suppose he'll be threatening you anymore, miss," Yasha says, sheathing the sword, "but you should probably go talk to your husband."

"I... Yes, I..."

Yasha nods tersely at turns to leave. She's not halfway down the street when she hears a commotion behind her and a few familiar voices ring out.

"We heard sounds of distress! Ma'am, are you alright?"

"I, uh, yes, I'm alright. A rather tall woman came and saved me from this scoundrel." A pause. "Who... Who is she?"

Without even looking, she knows the monk has shrugged and pulled a face. "Who knows? We've run into her a few times too."

"She's a hero, Beau!"

Ah, the little blue tiefling.

There's a low laugh, and Yasha can feel her heart beat a little faster.

"Yeah Jester, she's a hero."

A hero. Well that's new. She wonders what the Stormlord would think of that.

\--

It's not hard to track the merry band of adventurers who seemed to always be around. They were, after all, six rather loud and ostentatious, brightly coloured individuals with a habit of wreaking havoc wherever they were. Even when they were trying to be stealthy, their attempts were dismal at best. The recent fireball explosion at the High Richter's house? If she was being totally honest, Yasha wouldn't be surprised if the source was those troublemakers. So of course, this is how she got here, following the "Mighty Acht" when they headed off to what she was sure would be certain doom when they went to find the Gentleman. 

She was sure this was because of the halfling woman she encountered, but if her history had taught her anything, it was to not meddle in the affairs of individuals that were not yourself. Clearly, the Mighty Acht didn't have such sensibilities, which is why she's here, trapped between the wall and a circle of individuals with rather pointy spears and some sort of tube expelling explosive slugs of metal that really hurt, with the aforementioned colourful group in various states of consciousness just around the corner trying to get away. 

"Put down the sword, aasimar."

The man strolls into the corridor with all the arrogance of a roc who caught the cow. He's slimy in every sense of the word, from the slightly open shirt to the water pouring off his face.

"You can suck all five feet of it, you sack of shit."

He pauses, frowns, and a disturbingly creepy smile cracks across his face. 

"Oh, I like her. I think I'll find you very useful."

Yasha growls and crouches forward, sword at the ready. She had been captured once and it really sucked, she'd be damned if she let herself be captured again. She bemoans that she is fighting in a tunnel deep underground, far from the eyes of her god in the clouds above.

The spear points thrust out and she can feel her shoulder muscles tearing from the force of one of those metal slugs and she lets the rage overtake her. It feels like molten rock being funnelled into her veins, searing into her muscles, giving her the strength of gods. Spears snap when she rips them from the hands of her attackers, and her blades cut deep into the flesh of the Gentleman's lackeys, but even one blessed by the Stormlord cannot stand up to the destruction of these booming weapons.

'Fuck the Mighty Acht', she thinks, as darkness creeps around the edges of her vision, 'Their name isn't even that good.'

\--

It had been a while since Yasha had spent so much time out away from the night sky. It was claustrophobic to say the least, and the unsettling feeling in her stomach never gave way throughout the days spent in the cells underground. The cell was barely wide enough to fit her laying down, and there were no windows or any source of light available other than the sconce that hung on the wall several feet to the left of her cell door on the opposite side of the corridor. It was only by the clockwork arrival of the Gentleman's men that she could keep track of the days, something she did by scratching marks onto the wall just above where she slept. It had been four days since she had been captured, her weapons stripped from her hands, and thrown into this cell to wake, and while the Gentleman had been threatening, no harm had come to her yet. Perhaps he thought the Mighty Acht would come for her.

The dirt was uncomfortable against her back, but Yasha sat high nonetheless. She could feel cabin fever beginning to set in, but energy was best conserved for the fight rather than expended aimlessly doing pushups as the prisoner in the cell across from her was wont to do.

The underground tunnels were a mystery to her, as she was brought down here blindfolded, but every so often there would be a series of growls and screams as metal clanged against metal, some sort of creature's yelp, and silence once again. There was also some dripping of some kind, which would not be out of place within a natural cavern, but this place was far from natural and unlike the air above, the humidity in here was lacking. Strange things walked these halls, strangest of all the orange tabby who had padded past not an hour ago. 

There's a scuffle to the right, and Yasha leans against the bars, squinting into the darkness to try and ascertain the origin of the noise. 

Her aasimar eyes cut through the darkness and catch a familiar, almost comforting movement of silk in the distance, followed by the dull glow of an arcane blade. The movement comes closer and faces fade into view. The Mighty Acht.

The not-halfling girl scurries up to her door and jams in metal bits into the lock of her cell and fumbling around, manages to open the latch.

"Hurry now, we haven't much time!"

Staggering through the door, Yasha watches as the rest of the gang quickly dispatches two guards on duty.

"We're going back the way we came, come on!"

It's strange to be moving so far on both feet after this time, and it takes a few stumbling steps, but Yasha keeps up with the rest of the group, weaving through unfamiliar corridors, gingerly stepping over unconscious bodies. When they pass by an equipment room, she gets an eyeful of her beloved greatsword, and nicks it off the rack it had been laying against. With the familiar weight back in her hands, she continues down the hallway where darkness slowly faded into light and the group clambers through an open hatch. 

The half-orc she had saved leans against the door of the room they are in and slowly opens the door. A flash appears through the crack, and the blue-sashed monk's hand flies out, catching an arrow mid-air.

"Well, it seems to me that we have guests." The Gentleman's voice is dripping with displeasure, matching his physical appearance. "We didn't get off to a good start the first time around, perhaps you'll want to stay this time?"

There's the sound of swords being pulled from scabbards and the loading of boomsticks, and Yasha swallows.

The monk, Beau, turns to Yasha, a crooked grin on her face. She waves the arrow in the air. "If we get out of here, you're more than welcome to join us, since you seem to always be around anyways. The Mighty Nein sounds better than what we have now."

Yasha smiles a little and nods, steeling herself and bringing up her sword.

"Ready?"

She nods to Fjord, and he kicks open the door.

"I see we've chosen the violent route. Any last words?" The Gentleman asks, stroking his moustache.

"I would like to rage."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second entry to the Vigilante AU, I'm Not Your Hero fits in right after Yasha deals with the guy harassing the halfling woman. I don't really have plans to continue this series, but if it happens, it will be when I'm struck by sudden inspiration. If anyone is inspired to inspire me, please go on and drop a comment or something below.
> 
> Tumblr: frumpkinspocketdimension  
> Discord: SweetBabyRae#0967
> 
> Title from Bon Iver's Holocene


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